Scaramucci on leaks: ‘I’m going to fire everybody’

WASHINGTON — Anthony Scaramucci, President Donald Trump's new communications director, vowed Tuesday to purge the White House staff of disloyal aides in an effort to crack down on leaks, as another member of the press staff resigned from a West Wing reeling from an unfolding shake-up.

"I'm going to fire everybody — that's how," Scaramucci told reporters in the White House driveway, when asked how he planned to identify who had been disclosing information to reporters without authorization and ensure that the leaks stopped. He said he had authority directly from Trump to do so.

"You're either going to stop leaking, or you're going to get fired," he said.

"If I've got to get the thing down to me and Sarah Huckabee, then the leaking will stop," he added, referring to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the newly named press secretary who stepped in after Sean Spicer resigned last week in protest of Scaramucci's hiring.

[Standoff between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions escalates]

Michael C. Short, an assistant press secretary who had been close to Spicer, resigned just hours after Scaramucci had been quoted in a news report Tuesday saying he would be fired. The White House confirmed the move in a terse news release, saying that Sanders had accepted Short's resignation and that officials were "grateful for Michael's service and wish him well in his future endeavors."

His departure marked another setback for Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who populated the West Wing with a group of former RNC aides loyal to him. Those affiliated with the establishment forces of the party are often viewed with suspicion by others in Trump's inner circle.

Both Priebus and Spicer had argued forcefully against bringing on Scaramucci, whose hiring seemed to signal a pivot by the White House toward surrounding Trump with people more likely to stick by the campaign coda of "let Trump be Trump." Trump has long been suspicious of the party committee hires, whose personal loyalty he has repeatedly questioned.

On Tuesday evening, Trump was joined on Air Force One by two former campaign hands, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, who traveled with him to Youngstown, Ohio, for a campaign rally.

Trump has long been suspicious, by contrast, of the party committee hires, whose personal loyalty he has repeatedly questioned.

For his part, Short's standing with the president and his inner circle never fully recovered from the hit it took in October, when he visibly and abruptly departed Trump Tower after the emergence of the "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump had been captured in 2005 speaking in vulgar terms about grabbing women's genitals without their consent. And some in the White House had long believed that Short was the source of unflattering leaks about the president and the inner workings of the West Wing.

The targeting of Short — coupled with Trump's increasingly bitter public feud with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, one of his earliest and most loyal campaign supporters — put staff aides throughout the White House on edge Tuesday, with several expressing concern about their jobs and lamenting an increasingly toxic atmosphere.

The dysfunctional dynamic was on display in the Rose Garden Tuesday during a news conference Trump held with Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon.

Rather than taking a seat among the senior staff who attended, Spicer, who spent much of the day in his office with the door closed, emerged suddenly in the White House colonnade to give reporters updates on when the news conference would begin. As soon as it did, he stood off to one side watching the proceedings next to a line of hedges, like a wedding planner who was dropped before the big event and nonetheless showed up to watch it unfold. Scaramucci did not attend.

Trump has been plagued since taking office by a leaky White House, where warring factions of aides and advisers have routinely litigated their internal disputes in the press, leading to unflattering disclosures about senior members of Trump's team and the president himself. Scaramucci's threats appeared intended to reassure Trump that he would do something to solve the problem, although there is little evidence that the deep rifts within his inner circle have been resolved.

Scaramucci conceded that the leaking was not confined to the communications operation.

"There are leakers in the comms shop, there are leakers everywhere," Scaramucci said, calling the practice atrocious, outrageous and unpatriotic. "It damages the president personally, it damages the institution of the presidency, and I don't like it."

Behind the scenes, Scaramucci has struck a gentler tone, telling colleagues in a meeting Monday that their contributions were appreciated and he wanted everyone to work together to improve how the White House functioned. But he presented few details about his plans for changes in the coming days.

On Tuesday, he told reporters he would apply the no-leaks policy in the future, forgiving past unauthorized disclosures as long as the practice ceased.

"If they don't stop leaking, I'm going to put them out on Pennsylvania Avenue," Scaramucci said, gesturing at the street outside the White House gates with his eyes shielded from the sun by blue-tinted aviator sunglasses. "Do you want to sell postcards to the tourists outside the gate, or do you want to work in the West Wing. What do you want to do?"

Yet what prompted his broadside against leaks was a question from a reporter about the fate of Short, whom Scaramucci himself had told Politico earlier on Tuesday was to be dismissed.

"Let's say I'm firing Michael Short today," he said when asked about the story, hours before Short quit. "The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic. I should have the opportunity, if I need to let somebody go, to let the person go in a very humane, dignified way."